


a wolf in goat's clothing

by merelydovely



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Christmas Fluff, F/F, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28106037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merelydovely/pseuds/merelydovely
Summary: Cosette is knitting something for Christmas. Eponine isn’t sure what that means.
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent/Éponine Thénardier
Comments: 19
Kudos: 39
Collections: Les Mis Holiday Exchange (2020)





	a wolf in goat's clothing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Avix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avix/gifts).



> this was mistakenly posted unfinished, so if you checked it out earlier than 2:30 AM pacific time on 12/25/20, it was not done, all the tenses were screwed up, etc. It's fixed now!
> 
> thx to [jelenedra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelenedra) for the lightning-fast tense-fixing beta job and cheering me on!

The rack of skirts wasn’t ordered by size anymore. Actually, maybe _none_ of the racks in this store were organized by size anymore. The shop was overflowing with trendy, impractical outfits, the kind Eponine had always coveted in high school but, now that she had a little real money, could never quite bring herself to purchase. She’d been drawn to the window display because of her own nostalgia for that lost dream, but now that they’d been confronted with the possibility of trying on the clothes, Eponine’s desire to look like an Instagram-ready high schooler had dwindled. Cosette, her eyes fixed on the row of neat, A-line skirts, had probably already found the most adult item of clothing in the store.

Eponine was staring idly at Cosette’s fingers pushing the hangers this way and that, like fall leaves twisting in the wind, when the absurdity of it all really hit her.

She was twenty-three years old and she had _never_ gone clothes shopping with a female friend before. _Ever._ She’d never even shopped for clothes in a mall before (unless you counted the Target at the far end of Lakeview Shopping Center where Eponine’s mother bought Eponine her prom dress, which Eponine didn’t.) The most time she’d spent in a mall was back when it was cool for high schoolers to hang out at the food court for hours at a time, and even then she’d thought it was pretty stupid. 

A good seventy percent of her clothing was thrifted; the rest of her clothes were castoffs from her friends and boyfriend sweaters stolen from her exes. Eponine bought all her underwear at _Walmart_. She didn’t know what the fuck she was doing here.

Cosette let out a tiny annoyed _hmm_ , her plush lips pressed together in a moue of disappointment, and Eponine remembered.

Oh. Right.

“I don’t think they have any of these in large,” said Cosette in her soft, musical voice.

“I bet they do, but it’s somewhere in there,” said Eponine, pointing to several customers’ worth of rejected clothes balanced precariously on top of a rack across the aisle.

Her voice was too loud, her words too rushed, stumbling over each other in their haste to get out of her mouth, but Cosette laughed anyway, a high, fluting giggle.

They’d been close for a while now, her and Cosette. Or at least, what Eponine considered close, and probably what Cosette considered close too. Eponine talked a lot, always had, in the sort of loud, confessional way that made all the boys think she was opening up to them without actually touching on any real vulnerabilities. She’d been doing it that way for so long she wasn’t quite sure if she knew how to confess without making her confession into a mask, a stage-worthy performance, and she hated that she couldn’t quite bring herself to be raw and real with Cosette. _For_ Cosette.

Cosette herself was a bit of a mystery. Eponine had known her for nearly four years, now. For the first two years they’d only known each other because of Marius. It wasn’t until Cosette broke up with Marius that they’d actually started being something approximating friends, and Cosette had gone from a girlish, well-dressed threat to a fully-realized person. 

But they still didn’t really...hang out. Not in the way Eponine hung out with Grantaire, or with Parnasse, or with Gav and Azelma. Cosette didn’t insist on going out for drinks and expostulating on the literary references in different winery names, or show up at her apartment with unexplained injuries and good Scotch, or drag her to the arcade to play Dance Dance Revolution. Eponine had never even been to Cosette’s _house,_ though she knew it was a grand old thing covered in ivy, inhabited by Cosette’s white-haired father and aging housekeeper. 

Their friendship was a sideways one.They sat together at ABC meetings, now without Marius awkwardly between them, and they caught up in small trickles here and there. Eponine got Cosette drinks at Courfeyrac’s parties, and later Cosette always dragged Eponine over to the speakers and made her dance clumsily to Bahorel’s pop mixes. Eponine texted Cosette pictures of the animals she encountered around the city; Cosette texted back with pictures of flowers from her garden.

They were friends. Eponine was _fairly_ sure they were friends. Good friends, even. The problem was, she’d never really...had a female friend before. Around most girls, around Cosette, even, Eponine always felt like a wolf trying to blend in among sheep. Snarling, ready to bite, her limbs too long and her senses too sharp. How did a wolf learn to be a girl? How did anyone learn to be a girl? She wasn’t really sure how one went about it.

The whole shopping thing, for instance. That was weird. Girls did that, right? Went out and...shopped...for fun? Cosette had suggested it, but she seemed about as clueless as Eponine when it came to what they were supposed to be doing.

Eponine reached out and stroked the fabric of the nearest clothing item, trying to look interested. Probably she wasn’t meant to be staring aimlessly into the middle distance. The cloth felt cheap and slick under her hands. A dress, she thought. Or a top. Maybe a skirt. At least one of those three.

Suddenly fed up with the whole charade, Eponine pushed the offending item away. She looked at Cosette. “Does anything else here look good to you?” she asked. She fought back a wince. It was too brusque, too demanding. Like she was trying to hurry Cosette out of the store.

“Not really,” Cosette admitted. “Even the stuff that looks okay...I don’t think it’s very well made.”

Eponine straightened her spine and looked disdainfully over her shoulder. “ _Fast fashion_ ,” she said coldly, in a passable imitation of Enjolras.

Cosette dissolved into giggles again, this time muffling them with her hands. “Oh, I feel bad for laughing, but that is _exactly_ him _,”_ she said, shaking her head.

“Anyway, this stuff sucks, I’m sorry I dragged us in here,” Eponine said. “Let’s just go. You can pick next.”

“Oh, you didn’t _drag_ me anywhere,” protested Cosette. “But sure, let’s, um…let’s go to…”

They stepped out of the cluttered store and into the mall. Cosette looked back and forth, her eyes moving over the shops, not really landing on any one of them.

“Actually,” she said, her voice oddly hesitant, “would you mind terribly if I did some Christmas shopping?”

Eponine stared at her. “But it’s barely October.” She never did her Christmas shopping any earlier than the end of November, and that was only if she was really on top of it.

Cosette shrugged. “I’m going to be knitting a few things, that’s all. I’m going to need plenty of lead time.”

Of course. Cosette brought her knitting to meetings frequently. “Right, okay, sure. Where are we going?”

Cosette lead her out of the mall and across the street. A chill wind made talking impossible; they retreated into their coats and scarves like birds settling into their feathers. Silently, Cosette guided Eponine across the street, over an unnecessarily large parking lot, and up to a craft store that sat between a supermarket and a fast food place. 

“What are you looking for?” Eponine asked as they walked inside, her eyes struggling to settle anywhere in the explosion of craft supplies before her. “Yarn, right?”

“Yep!” Cosette walked like she knew where she was going. In no time, they were in a row of yarn that Eponine couldn’t distinguish from the four other rows of yarn they’d passed by, and Cosette was hefting yarn in her hands. Eponine had been under the impression yarn came in balls, but what Cosette held was shaped more like a lozenge.

Cosette held the lozenge of yarn out to her. “Here, feel. It’s cashmere.”

Eponine pet the yarn. It was frightfully soft, much softer than any piece of clothing she’d ever owned. It was like something you’d wrap a baby in.

She looked up. Cosette was smiling at her expectantly, mouth open just a little. She looked like she was waiting to be kissed. 

“It’s really nice,” Eponine managed. She thrust the yarn back into Cosette’s hands. “What’s it for?”

“I’m not sure yet,” said Cosette. “Probably a scarf, because I don’t know who I’m going to get in the exchange yet.”

Since the key members of the ABC had graduated, they’d started a year-end gift exchange where every member was assigned three other members. It meant nobody had to buy gifts for over a dozen people, but it also meant that they all had a few gifts to open, and it made the associated party considerably more merry.

(Eponine usually just bought people alcohol, which was always well-received.)

“Do you always knit presents, then?”

Cosette shook her head, then held up a hand, a _wait_ sort of gesture. “Well, I definitely don’t knit one hundred percent of my gifts. Usually it’s just one or two a year. But I guess it _is_ pretty much every year.” She put back the yarn she’d given Eponine and reached for another lump of it. “Papa and Toussaint have so many things I’ve knitted for them that I have to get really creative to think of things I haven’t given them already. Last year I knit Toussaint a pincushion shaped like a cactus!”

Eponine hummed. “And this year?”

“This year she’ll be easy; her shopping bag finally ripped, so I’m going to make her another one.” Cosette thrust two more not-exactly-balls of yarn at Eponine. “Here. Which color, do you think?”

“For a bag? Or for a scarf?”

“Just in general.”

Eponine looked at the proffered bundles. One was a rich plum, the sort of dark, subtle color she might choose for her own clothes, the kind of color that blended into an alleyway better than black. But the other was a soft light blue, not quite light enough for a baby blue—a hint of grey, a hint of teal, like the sun shining through the edge of a raincloud. It wasn’t the kind of color that came on a paint swatch; it needed all the tiny fibers that made up the yarn to give it depth.

It made her think of Cosette.

“The blue one,” she says. “Definitely the blue one. It’s beautiful.”

Cosette squinted at her a little, her head cocked to one side, and Eponine realized she’d spoken too forcefully. _Again._ Fuck, why couldn’t she just be _normal_ for five minutes?

But Cosette smiled, and the awkwardness passed. The blue yarn went into Cosette’s plastic shopping basket and Cosette turned away to fondle yet another yarn-blob.

Eponine breathed out through her nose and did _not_ scream in frustration. 

The thing was, see, the thing was, was that Cosette was the first female friend she’d ever really had, and Eponine knew _she_ was the first female friend _Cosette_ had ever had, and she was _not_ going to ruin that by getting her feelings all over everything. She was _not_.

“How long have been knitting?” she asked, desperate for something to think about that wasn’t the shape of Cosette’s cheek as her dark head turned.

“Oh,” said Cosette, resettling her shopping basket on her elbow, “It feels like forever, but I guess I learned when I was about eight or nine. Not too long after Papa adopted me. I—I usually tell people Toussaint taught me, but actually,” her voice dropped, and Eponine’s pulse fluttered as Cosette leaned in, “it was Papa. He learned in prison. They only had very simple patterns there, and he was never very good, but he said it helped passed the time.”

Eponine didn’t know what to say. There were a few seconds of mental flailing before her brain came up with, “So you don’t knit together, then?”

Cosette added red, white, and royal blue loaves of yarn to her basket; no prizes for guessing what kind of scarf they’d end up in. “No, not really,” she said. “Not anymore. He used to knit with me when I was little, but I enjoy it more than he does. Now that he has his books and his PBS documentaries, he’s fine.” She petted the top of the pile of yarn idly. “I don’t really get out much, you know? I never have. There’s a lot of sitting around at home. And it’s less lonely if I sit and knit in the living room while Papa reads and Toussaint does her embroidery.” 

Eponine used to resent Cosette, with her perfect clothes and her perfect curly hair and her perfect blue eyes, so striking against her dark amber skin. A rich, doting father; a handsome, doting boyfriend. A life untouched by tragedy. But she’d learned, over the years of their acquaintance, that just because Cosette’s life was picturesque did not mean it was without its tragedy. The people she’d lost, the isolation she’d lived with, the way all her closest friends were people in their sixties or seventies that she knew from her father’s aging church—it was just tragedy swimming under a foot of cloudy ice, waiting for spring.

Cosette had never quite admitted it outright, but she’d all but confirmed that as the only visibly mixed-race black girl at a series of tiny white-dominated Catholic schools, she’d had trouble finding friends. Even in university, where the student body was diverse enough for her to blend in, she hadn’t known how to make an opening salvo, how to tell a potential friend from a future bully. It had taken Marius’ foolhardiness to batter down the gates of her lonely tower.

While Eponine was grateful to Marius for his service, she couldn’t help but think that only Cosette’s desperation for people her own age could explain their relationship. Cosette was far too good for Marius, and far, _far_ too good for Eponine herself. No, Eponine would not ruin this friendship. She would _not_ take away this good, healthy thing from Cosette, or for that matter from herself. They would be friends, and they would learn how to be girls, _normal_ girls, girls who _shopped_ and _talked about boys_ , and that would be enough.

It would have to be.

\------------------

The thing was, see, the thing was—

—Eponine was a little bit in love with Cosette, maybe. Probably. 

She wasn’t sure when it started. Some time after Cosette’s breakup with Marius, definitely, because Eponine herself had still been pining after Marius for most of their relationship, and it took seeing Cosette without him to realize that it hadn’t been Marius she’d been pining for. Not really. She’d wanted him to want her; she’d wanted him to offer her the safety and respect and enthusiasm that all her past boyfriends and standing hookups and one-night-stands had denied her. When she’d seen him with Cosette, she’d thought him capable of that. He was so much better than everyone she’d ever dated, and she’d wanted that happiness for herself. She’d pinned that want on Marius.

But it turned out that Eponine had dated a massive conga line of jerks, and beating them out for the top spot wasn’t necessarily that impressive. 

Seeing Marius sulk about getting dumped had driven that home. He’d grown some since then, and he and Cosette were friends again now, but he’d said some unbelievably shitty things about her at the time, things Eponine had known were false.

It was enough to break the spell. Marius was better than her previous lovers, yes, but that didn’t mean she wanted him. She just wanted to stop being hurt.

\------------------

After a few years working the front desk of her family’s shitty hotel and then another few years waitressing at her family’s shitty restaurant that was actually a money-laundering scheme, Eponine had finally snagged a decent job somewhere that didn’t have her father’s grubby fingerprints all over it: Irma’s Props & Costumes Warehouse. Irma handled the logistics of costume rental, Grantaire handled the logistics of prop rental, and it was Eponine’s job to put everything back again when it was returned. Also, she swept the floors sometimes.

It was a fun job. It was somehow surprising to learn that you could rent boxes full of blank paper done up to look like medical records, or garbage bags full of surprisingly realistic fall leaves. Sometimes she came in for her shift only to see that tags from TV shows she’d actually heard of had been placed on props being prepped for pickup. And there was plenty of downtime between customers, which was when Grantaire would do paperwork and Eponine would find a box of doodads that needed organizing and sit down next to him.

It was November now, and they’d gotten their assignments for the ABC’s end-of-year gift exchange. Eponine had Feuilly, Musichetta, and Enjolras. Grantaire had Enjolras, Joly, and Floreal. Predictably, he’d already decided what he was going to get two of his best friends, and had moved on to freaking out over Enjolras, who he’d somehow _never_ gotten in all the years they’d been doing this.

“We’ve only been doing it for three years,” said Eponine, reasonably.

“That just means I could have very easily gone several more years without having to fucking worry about it,” Grantaire retorted. “Fuck fuckety fuck fuck fuck.”

“Language,” called Irma from her sewing machine.

“There’s no one here,” Grantaire yelled back.

“You could always draw him something,” said Eponine. “He likes non-commercial stuff, right? You know if you bought him something it’d have to be like, free trade and shit.”

“He’s honestly not as uptight about that as you’d think,” Grantaire said. His voice began to take on a distinct _talking about Enjolras_ tone. “He says we should strive to make improvements in our purchasing patterns where feasible, but that believing in individual consumption as a major vector for change is a lie pushed by companies to distract from the more important goal of collective power.”

“You sound like you’re reciting a script,” Eponine said, torn between impressed and disgusted. “You just swallow everything he says hook, line, and sinker.”

“And that’s not _all_ I’d like to swallow,” said Grantaire promptly. He grinned, very satisfied with himself.

“Don’t be gross.”

“Just honest.”

Eponine rolled her eyes at him. “Anyway, you should make him something. Cosette’s going to be knitting people things, it’ll be good to have lots of handmade gifts. All you craftsy people can get in on it.”

Grantaire straightened in his chair. “Cosette’s gonna knit?” he said. “For us?”

He sounded bizarrely skeptical. “Uh, yeah,” said Eponine. “Why are you being weird about it?”

“I’m not.” His spine relaxed again. “Just...intrigued. She hasn’t done that in a while.”

Clearly there was a story there. Eponine made a _go on_ kind of gesture. 

Grantaire nodded at her once, then took a deep breath. “Kinda surprised you don’t remember this, but the last time Cosette knitted something for someone, it was Marius. And it was a sweater.” He thumbed his phone open and started swiping speedily through his photos. “A really nice one, too. Cable-knit, fancy pattern, one of those cowl-neck things.”

He held the phone out to Eponine. There was a picture of Marius with his arm around Courfeyrac’s shoulders, kissing Cosette on the cheek. He was wearing a gorgeous maroon sweater with the sleeves rolled up to show off the dark hair on his pale forearms, and he looked, in Eponine’s opinion, almost good enough to eat.

“She gave it to him for his birthday—I think you had to miss that one because Gav had a fever, didn’t you?” Grantaire continued. “But you know what happened next, right?”

“I know she broke up with him pretty soon after his birthday,” said Eponine slowly. “But how’s that related?”

“Sweater curse,” said Irma from the doorway of her sewing room. Eponine and Grantaire both startled.

“ _Fuck_ ,” said Grantaire. “Don’t sneak up on a man like that, boss lady.”

“I do what I want,” said Irma, toneless. “Anyway. She knitted him a sweater and then dumped him? Sweater curse.”

“What the fuck’s a sweater curse?”

“Language.”

“Could you explain the meaning of ‘sweater curse,’ oh benevolent overlord?” asked Eponine, punching Grantaire in the arm. 

“Ow!”

“I don’t knit, but I have a lot of friends who do,” Irma said. “The sweater curse is what people blame when somebody knits their boyfriend a sweater and then they break up soon afterward. It’s not actually magic, obviously, it’s just the natural consequence of putting months of effort into knitting a sweater for a man, only to realize he just doesn’t appreciate it that much. And he doesn’t appreciate _you_ that much either.”

“Never heard of it,” said Grantaire. “But yeah, basically. He, uh…” A hand came up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “He said it was a really great sweater, and could she give him the receipt so he could exchange it for one in navy?”

Eponine’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding. Not even Mariusis _that_ stupid.”

Grantaire put up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

Irma squinted at him. “You were never a scout.”

He put a hand to his chest, faux-affronted. “I was a scout for three whole weeks! I had a little baby gay crush on the troop leader and everything. But I figured out pretty quickly he was homophobic as shit, so I bounced.”

With a snort, Irma inclined her head. “I’ll allow it.”

Eponine rocked back on her stool, putting her hands on her knees. “The sweater curse, huh,” she repeated. “Well, she’s just making a tricolore scarf for one of you France-loving bastards. I don’t think that counts.”

“Yep,” said Irma. “Smaller projects are safe. And gifts for spouses—because they know to appreciate the shit out of everything you make, or you wouldn’t have married them.”

Grantaire sniffed. “Fair enough. I’ll anticipate some kind of louche beanie, then.” He cracked his knuckles. “Still doesn’t mean I’m doing _art_ for _Enjolras_. That’s like asking me to cut my heart out and hand it to him on a platter.”

“Why’s it such a big deal?” said Eponine. “He clearly likes it, he picks up your little napkin doodles and pins them to the bulletin board, doesn’t he?”

“That’s _HIM?!”_ Grantaire shrieked, pushing himself violently away from the table, and all talk of Cosette and her sweater curse was forgotten.

\-----------

The back room of the Musain didn’t have any more bodies in it than usual, but with tinsel hung on every wall and a Christmas tree stuck in one corner, not to mention the fact that everyone was standing and milling around rather than sitting at attention, the place seemed crowded. Everyone was in some kind of festive attire: Musichetta was wearing a dress with a Christmas tree design, its star between her breasts; Jehan was wearing surprisingly realistic antlers, not to mention a collar; Grantaire was wearing a pointedly obnoxious light-up Hanukkah sweater; and Bahorel was in a fluffy white beard and a Santa suit.

Cosette looked gorgeous with her lightened curls twisted against her head into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, decorated with—Eponine had to suck in a gasp—actual tiny Christmas lights. She looked like an angel, a literal angel.

The effect was somewhat ruined by her bright green sweater, which had a small sheep in the middle and said FLEECE NAVIDAD.

“I didn’t come up with it,” she was quick to admit to Eponine. “I saw someone else wearing a storebought one and made my own.” She seemed embarrassed about it, as if making a sweater with her own two hands instead of purchasing one was something to discuss in hushed voices.

Eponine again found herself sticking to Cosette’s side like a burr, as if she could be as light and as beautiful and as warm as Cosette if she only stood close enough to her tonight. Eponine told stories of the prop shop; Cosette talked about how her job hunt was going. It was friendly and fluffy and perfectly appropriate for two friends catching up at a party, but Eponine kept desperately wanting it to be _more,_ wanted to push things into deeper waters. How did people _do_ that? How did you draw the line between what was “small talk” and what was “real talk” if what you were saying was all real things that were really happening in your real life, things that mattered to you, and yet it still felt like you weren’t quite there yet, weren’t quite at the point of opening up your ribcage to the other person and begging them to look inside you? She knew if she started trying to force herself into the open she’d just pull out the same performative truisms about being stressed and worried that everyone could pull out this time of year.

Cosette was glancing at her own empty glass. “I’m going to get another drink,” she said. “Do you mind?”

“No, sure, I’m gonna go tell Grantaire it stops counting as liquid courage after the first one,” said Eponine. 

Cosette mumbled something and strode off towards the hastily-designated drinks table. Eponine was still watching her go when Courfeyrac climbed up on a chair and clapped his hands. 

“Alright, everybody!” he called. “It is now time for the annual exchanging of the gifts! Go get your presents and start flinging them at their recipients! As always, we will make absolutely no attempt to do this in an orderly fashion! Let the chaos COMMENCE!”

Everyone dove for their belongings, lined up along the chairs and tables ringing the room, and began handing off their parcels as quickly as they could, getting loaded down with bags and boxes from other gift-givers as they went. With three gifts to give and three gifts to receive, it could get pretty hectic, but as always, they made a kind of game of it, some dodging their givers to try to offload all their packages before any could be pressed upon them. 

By the time the dust settled, Musichetta had tripped Bahorel onto the ground before promptly sitting on him, and Joly had flattened Combeferre with a flying tackle. Eponine had accepted presents from Bahorel (tightly wrapped, but squishy—probably a joke T-shirt) and Courfeyrac (hard and cylindrical—probably one of those cookie mixes Gav liked). She’d also managed to stick Feuilly’s present (his favorite brand of compression socks) in the flipped-open hood of his hoodie, reverse-pickpocketed Enjolras’ present (two tickets to a guest lecture from one of his organizer favorites) into his pants, and plopped Muischetta’s present (liquor-filled truffles) down on Bahorel’s head. She was still missing her third present.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder.

Eponine turned. It was Cosette.

Wordlessly, Cosette held out a floppy, squarish package wrapped in white tissue paper. Eponine took it. “Thanks,” she told Cosette. “Do you want me to wait, or open it now?”

“Either way is fine,” said Cosette quickly. Her brown skin glowed golden in the soft light thrown by the Christmas lights up on every wall. “I—”

But she stopped before the sound had even really left her mouth, glancing away. 

“Merry Christmas, Eponine,” she said, after a beat. Then she turned and walked off.

Eponine’s brows drew together. What the fuck?

Her eyes fell to the floppy package in her arms. Unceremoniously dumping her first two presents on a mostly-cleared table, she ripped open Cosette’s gift.

 _Soft_ was her first thought as her hands touched fabric. It was—it was the yarn from the yarn store, the sky-after-a-storm sun-through-the-clouds color Cosette had made her choose. Cosette had bought it and turned it into a—what?

Eponine held up the folded garment, and it fell open, revealing itself to be a sweater. Cable-knit, with a complicated criss-crossing pattern down the front that called to mind Celtic knots. Swallowing a lump that had suddenly come into her throat, Eponine pulled it on. The soft material draped against the shape of her body, hugging her. While it fit her upper body like a glove, the sleeves were unusually long, covering all but the tips of Eponine’s fingers. It felt like a caress against her bare forearms. 

A sweater. A _sweater._ Cosette hadn’t made her a scarf, or a bag, or a beanie. She had made Eponine an _entire sweater,_ not even a joke sweater, but a fashionable sweater that, if Eponine had to guess, had required at least one more trip back to the craft store to get another potato-shape or two of that fancy yarn.

Eponine didn’t know what it meant.

Or rather, she _did_ know, or thought she knew, but it was too much. It was too much to believe at once.

She glanced around for Cosette, and immediately began to panic when she couldn’t find her. Crowded or not, this wasn’t a large room, and there were only so many corners Cosette could hide in.

“Cosette,” she squeaked out, her normally overloud voice suddenly tiny. “ _Cosette,”_ she said again, louder this time, and though Cosette did not answer, Combeferre did.

“She said she had to duck out,” he said. “Did you need her for something?”

 _The rest of my life_ , Eponine didn’t say. “Which way did she go?”

Combeferre pointed to the back door, and Eponine abandoned her things on the table and ran.

The back door led to a narrow hallway that boasted one storage closet and a door to the loading dock in the back of the Musain. Eponine burst out of the back door at top speed and nearly sent Cosette flying; the other girl hadn’t had time to get far, weighed down by what seemed to be a large ceramic cookie jar patterned with butterflies. (Jehan’s doing, probably.)

“Cosette,” said Eponine, breathless. “Cosette.”

Cosette clutched the cookie jar to her chest, her eyes huge. “Oh, Eponine, you’re—you’re wearing it.”

“Of course I am,” said Eponine. “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s wonderful. I love it. I can’t believe you tricked me into picking the color.”

That earned her a pleased, bashful smile and a duck of Cosette’s beautiful head. “I have my moments.”

“But—” Eponine stopped. She didn’t know how to ask this. She barely even knew how to _think_ it.

Cosette bit her lip. “But what?”

“But, uh, what’s it made of?” Eponine said, completely at random. _Stupid, stupid_. It was like all her courage had been used up just getting her to believe that Cosette had actually knit her a sweater for a reason, and now that she actually had a chance to _do_ something about it, she had no courage left to spare.

“Cashmere,” said Cosette quizzically. “It’s a special kind of goat hair. Super soft. Are you allergic?”

“No. No, sorry, I just.” Eponine sucked in a huge breath. All of a sudden, she knew exactly what she should say. She just wished, very badly, that she was a love interest in a Hallmark movie and knew how to say incredibly vulnerable, cheesy things without wanting to expire on the spot. “I just. I thought it might be made of something else.”

Cosette stepped forward, into the beam of light pouring from the fixture over the door. “Like what?”

Eponine cringed, and cringed, and cringed, but she made herself say it: “Girlfriend… material.”

Now it was _Cosette’s_ turn to suck in a huge breath. “Oh. _Oh._ Yes. Yes, it can, um, it can definitely—it’s definitely that too. Very high, _high_ quality girlfriend material.”

Eponine wanted to touch her, make sure this was real, make sure _Cosette_ was real, but the stupid cookie jar was in the way. Instead they just stared at each other, smiling and smiling until their faces hurt with it.

“Oh this is silly,” said Cosette, and she set the cookie jar on the ground and then bouncing back upright to take Eponine’s hands, sliding down the smooth fabric covering Eponine’s arms before creeping back up under the overlong sleeves of the sweater to find Eponine’s fingers and lace them with her own. “There now, that’s much better.”

“I can’t believe you made me a sweater,” said Eponine. She felt slightly dizzy. “Not after what happened with Marius.”

Cosette blew out a breath, a tiny little laugh at her own expense. “I figured, well, I was already pretty much set to never have my feelings acknowledged, right? I didn’t have any expectations, so you couldn’t possibly let me down.” 

“But _why_ ,” protested Eponine, her voice almost a whine. “If you had feelings, if you had a whole _sweater_ of feelings, why didn’t you say? You were really just gonna give me something worth hundreds of dollars and not _tell_ me? _I_ was the one set to never act on my feelings. Because—because I’m me, and you’re you! _You’re_ the one who’s high quality!”

“No, that’s—I don’t even know what to say to that!” said Cosette, laughing a little. “That’s, that’s totally backwards, obviously _you_ ’re the brave one, you just asked me out with a pickup line!”

“That wasn’t _me_ , though,” said Eponine desperately. “Not really.” That was just her playing a role. Trying to pretend she was braver than she was, cooler than she was. How did Cosette not see that?

“Mm. It sounded like you.” Cosette was very close now, close enough that Eponine could see the freckles dusting her dark cheeks, see the way her lipstick had started to rub off on the edges. “It looked like you too. And I’m pretty sure you’re the one I said yes to.”

“That’s—that’s true,” Eponine allowed. It was hard to argue with that last part.

Cosette was so close that there was nowhere to look but at her mouth.

Eponine decided she could pretend to be braver than she was just a little bit more. She pushed forward the last unclaimed inch, pressing Cosette’s mouth softly to hers, and pulled Cosette close, wrapping her up in the soft warmth of her new favorite sweater. 

**Author's Note:**

> eponine has absolutely no idea how fuckin cool she looks to everyone that isn't her
> 
> eponine also has absolutely no idea that the word "skein" exists so i had fun coming up with every possible alternative


End file.
